Mark Forbes, Banda Aceh – There are growing concerns that the Indonesian Government's plans to hastily relocate about 60,000 tsunami victims into 36 supervised barracks could spark outbreaks of disease.
More than 426,000 tsunami survivors are living in temporary refugee camps across Aceh, but the Government wants most of them closed and many of the residents resettled in barracks-style huts within two weeks, with the remainder sent home or transferred to other accommodation.
On the outskirts of Banda Aceh, the Herald found wooden barracks being constructed over open drains with water pooling underneath. Each building will house up to 100 people. The supervisor of construction at the Lambaro camp said he was obliged to build the barracks over a drain due to a lack of land.
"We tried our best to build the barracks as well as possible, but to stop the water under the house would cause a flood," the supervisor, Sumantri, said. "We would not normally build houses in these conditions but this is the land we have." A relief organiser conceded the cramped conditions could lead to outbreaks of dengue fever and malaria.
In the existing ramshackle refugee camps, many of the displaced are torn between a desire to return and rebuild their lives and the fear a tsunami could strike again. Along the west coast, many villages have been simply washed away, along with their accompanying infrastructure.
Sitting in Banda Aceh's largest refugee camp, Syamadiah rejects the plan to move her to central barracks and wants her coastal village of Stui rebuilt. "That's where we live, it's where I earn my living," she said.
Syamadiah wants to rebuild the ice stand that provided her with a basic income. But her neighbour, Nurhayati, does not want to return; she wants a new beginning.
"I see the trauma and I see where my house used to be," she says, sobbing. "It makes me sad to remember my lost daughter." Ashida, who escaped from the tsunami with only the clothes on her back, would also prefer to move to a relocation camp. "The land where my house was is under the sea; I cannot live under the sea," she said. "Many people are afraid to go back to the beach, we are afraid the tsunami will happen again."
The government co-ordinator of the relocation program, Ibu Henny, said refugees would be placed in the barracks only voluntarily. Some requests to have camps built near former coastal villages had been rejected for safety reasons, she said. "We will listen to the wishes of the people. In Calang 300 fishermen are not willing to be moved to the mountains, so we will build a barracks near the beach."
A United Nations relief co-ordinator, Joel Boutroue, said a larger number of community facilities could be preferable, providing basic services and allowing people to decide if they wanted to move into them.
Aid agencies are believed to have reservations about the barracks, with concerns growing about the wishes of the population being ignored and fears over the role of the Indonesian military in the camps. Until the tsunami struck, Aceh was in effect under military rule due to a long-running conflict with separatists.